With one league loss in the last seven matches, the Latics finally seem to be picking up a head of steam. Head Coach, Dino Maamria, was delighted with the positivity shown by his squad, especially in the way that they managed to eke out a win at Morecambe.
He commented, “I'm absolutely delighted for our fans today. It gave me goosebumps actually to see the potential of the football club, the potential when those fans get behind us. I thought they were brilliant from kick-off throughout, we all enjoyed celebrating with them and that tells me where I want to take this football club, so that's why I am here. So it was a fantastic day for us, it's always a tough game to come up here, they've been decent at home winning two and drew one in their last three games before we played them here and got a new Manager in. They had a right go, but we controlled it. I felt after the first 15 minutes when we started passing the ball and playing the football that we're capable of playing I thought we were totally in control. We scored a great goal and is something that we've been working on. I was just disappointed at half-time, something that I mentioned to them is Morecambe always start strongly in the second-half and in their last couple of games, certainly against Newport, they were one-nil down and came back in the second-half and were good against Newport and won it 2-1.”
“So all those things were said at half-time and was really disappointed to concede after two minutes into the second-half. Having said that, I though the character, the resilience of the players, the calmness especially from Chris McCann that he gave us in the middle of the park to get back on the front foot, to control the football again and go forward. I thought we should've scored two or three in the second-half but I was delighted with Sylla to get his goal and we deserved it. Since I came in I've been talking about finishing the second-half strong, about managing those pressured moments and we've been growing every game and have been getting better and better. When the pressure is on we bounce back. When they got the equaliser their fans rightly so got behind them and it got their tails up. We got back on top by controlling the football again and going on the front foot once more, which we were brilliant at doing so. McCann and Sylla did really well in the middle of the park, our front three were fantastic and the back four especially Hamer and Wheater either side who were solid.”
“I thought we limited them really. Despite the goal they scored and having their fair share of the ball in the second-half we looked dangerous going forward every time. The best way is to try and keep that cohesion in the team. They know each other pretty well now as we've been playing a certain way for a while. We've been doing a lot of work especially on going forward as we know we're lacking goals and need to score more. It is showing as I'm not someone who is big on changing the team all the time. I give players chances, I make sure they are allowed to have bad a game every now and then. The best way to reward them is to give them the shirt to make sure they are putting in a good performance. Having said that we've got a couple of games now very close together so we've got to make sure that I get some freshness in the team. The lads who came on, Wilson gave us an injection going forwards and Chris Eagles was good when he came on, even Tomas now with a couple of games he's come back in and done a solid job so the squad together are doing a good job. They are a very coachable group and we're improving all the time and that's the most important thing."
"They inspire me to do that [celebrate]. That's my first celebration for a while to celebrate a goal. It meant a lot to us and the football club, especially our fans who turned up in numbers. We're here to please our fans. We're here to make sure that we give the performance needed. I'm just delighted for everybody to get that second win on the bounce that puts us on 26 points and we can start looking up now, looking ahead to the Salford game with a lot of optimism. Speaking to the players I'm looking at the form table and trying to top that so we can continue to go in the right direction. Now the job is to make sure we get each other ready over the next couple of days. I know Salford had a good win and will bring support and I'm sure our fans will do the same as it's going to be a big game for us. It will obviously be fantastic to get that third win on the bounce.”